Now, fake pointers on computer screens to foil 'shoulder surfers'

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Last Updated: Sat, Feb 16, 2013 12:00 hrs

A new technology that allows several mouse pointers to appear while you are logging on the secure services can help foil people who try to have a glance at your screen while you are entering private information.

Most of the online banking sites ask people to log into the secure services by using a mouse and an on-screen keyboard, as these are able to fool most keylogger viruses.

The trouble is that a "shoulder surfer" can easily see the buttons, which you pressed to enter your password.

Alexander de Luca and colleagues at the University of Munich, Germany, found a answer to this problem, their technology allows a person to call up an array of 16 different pointers when the on-screen keyboard is active, New Scientist reported.

Team member Emanuel von Zezschwitz said that the user controls only one pointer rest appear to press keys at random to distract the snooper.

In an experiment with 39 volunteers, the team found that a snooper was easily able to steal a password 90 percent of the time, when fake pointers were not employed.

But when the users employed then, the snoopers were successful only 5 percent of the time with 16 fake pointers and 35 percent with eight pointers. (ANI)